LANSING – As newly elected state Attorney General Dana Nessel prepares to embark on a four-year term, she expects her priorities to be significantly different than those of her predecessor, Bill Schuette.

In an interview with the Free Press, Nessel said those priorities will include expanding the civil rights unit of the Attorney General's Office, refocusing the environmental unit to concentrate on violations by businesses and ramping up the consumer protection unit to start working on things such as as Internet scams, identity theft and helping citizens whose insurance claims get denied.

She also wants to create a new unit to deal with auto insurance fraud and potentially move forward on a a request by former governor Rick Snyder to sue Minnesota-based manufacturer 3M for the PFAS contamination of thousands of sites in Michigan.

During her time on the campaign trail, Nessel, the Plymouth attorney best known for her part in the successful fight to legalize same-sex marriage, was highly critical of the man she hoped to succeed as attorney general.

And now that she has had the time to meet and talk with the entire staff in the AG's office, she says her fears have been realized.

"Some of my concerns about the office were well-founded. I met with the civil rights division. It consisted of one person," she said. "This office should be doing more work on prosecuting environmental crimes ... and the consumer protection unit hasn’t been permitted to do the type of work that they’d like to do — the type of work they did under previous administrations."

Under Schuette, the office had different priorities and concentrated a significant amount of effort in areas such as human trafficking, getting funding to test rape test kits that had languished for years, and the prosecution of former MSU sports doctor Larry Nassar and state and local officials associated with the Flint water crisis.

For Nessel, those were admirable issues to champion, but Schuette also joined nine lawsuits targeted at ending the federal Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, and fought efforts to legalize same-sex marriage all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

And Nessel railed against those policies during her campaign for office. While she ultimately prevailed in the race over Republican Tom Leonard, the former Speaker of the House of Representatives from Dewitt, it was the closest race at the top of the ticket, with Nessel winning by a narrow 49-46 percent margin.

As the new attorney general, Nessel wants to get back to the roots of the office that were the hallmarks of longtime Attorney General Frank Kelley, who championed consumer protections during his tenure.

"This office can be used not just for partisan projects, but in a way that will help all members of the community," she said. "The way I want to help all the residents of the state is irrespective of their political persuasions. I’m hoping Republican legislators want that too."

So in addition to her other priorities, Nessel hopes to:

Turn over the criminal cases regarding the Flint water crisis to Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy to continue to investigate and take to trial. And she wants her office to concentrate on the civil lawsuits filed by Flint residents with a hope to settle the matters with the blessing of her primary client, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. "That’s my goal, but obviously, I have an obligation to my clients and we’ll have to work together. But my instinct is that we’re not going to see what happened in the last administration with these cases being dragged out and dragged out and every single decision by every judge being appealed to the highest level. I just want to help the people of the city of Flint in any way I can."

Open satellite offices across the state, including the Upper Peninsula, Flint and Grand Rapids. She'll relocate some staff to state offices already located in those areas and said she already has volunteers for an assignment in the U.P. "As I was on the campaign trail, I heard the same complaints over and over: People feel their state government isn’t listening to them. Well it’s hard to when you live in Gogebic and the closest office to you is in Lansing."

Explore how to move forward with a request made to the Attorney General's Office last summer by Snyder to sue manufacturer 3M over high levels of PFAS found in thousands of sites across Michigan. The company began manufacturing chemicals linked to PFAS in the 1950s and stopped production in 2002. They were used in Scotchgard, fire retardants, nonstick cookware and other products. The lawsuit was never filed.

And though it ultimately will be a decision for Whitmer, Nessel said she'd like to settle a lawsuit by Michigan residents falsely accused of unemployment insurance fraud. The state has acknowledged that at least 20,000 Michigan residents — and possibly as many as 40,000 — were wrongly accused of fraud between 2013 and 2015 by a $47-million state computer system that the state operated without human supervision. "I have full faith and confidence that Gov. Whitmer wants to do everything she can to indemnify people who were harmed by wrongful state actions. ... It’s unfair not only to the people who were harmed, it’s unfair for the rest of us who have to foot the bill for these attorneys' fees because these cases weren’t resolved properly in the first place."

Although much of her early days in office will be used to change the focus of the Schuette regime, she did give the Midland Republican credit for his open-door policy for her transition team.

"He was really magnanimous during the course of the transition. He gave me unfettered access to the office and I met with every division and every staff member.," she said. "And what I saw was this really dedicated group of civil servants. I’m very excited to work with them."

Schuette returned the favor, leaving behind a handwritten note for Nessel offering congratulations on her victory and hope for her future.

"You will find that the lawyers and team here at the DAG (Department of Attorney General) are hardworking, honest and dedicated to the citizens of Michigan," he wrote. "If I can ever be of help or provide a perspective, I am happy to lend a hand. I wish you well and for every success in the years ahead. Michigan is a a wonderful, complex state with a marvelous diversity of people, businesses, industries and cultures."

One of her top goals, however, is to have a better working relationship with the new governor, which eluded the last two occupants of the jobs — Snyder and Schuette.

"It's been 28 years since the governor and the attorney general have both been Democrats. But even when we’ve had a governor and AG of same party, they didn’t necessarily get along so great," Nessel said. "And that’s not the case with me and Gov. Whitmer. I have an enormous amount of respect for her, we’re philosophically aligned with our priorities and I think we’re going to work really well together."